Lorne Albaum has developed a better version of “buy low, sell high”. It is buy really low — as in well below the market price of publicly-traded stocks of big, famous companies in the United States and Canada.

His Toronto-based firm TRC Capital Corporation is the leading practitioner of so-called “mini-tender offers”. It attempts to acquire less than 5 per cent of a public company directly from shareholders at a price less than what the market is bearing. A Google search quickly shows that he’s made mini-tender offers over the last decade at Danaher, Duke Energy, Baker Hughes, Fortis, SAIC, Disney, Marathon, Barrick, EOG among tens of others. A recent offer at ADP, where TRC had an offer to buy up to 2m shares at price of $71 or a 4 per cent discount to its market price at the time, caught our eye. Call Mr Albaum’s schemes bizarre, shady or exploitative. But since he is threading a legal loophole in US securities law, just don’t call what he’s doing illegal. Read more

The value of Bitcoins has exploded. Again.
FT Alphaville takes you through the latest news as well as the history of Bitcoin, and also we get a bit philosophical about what it all means. Jump in and join the discussion!

Markets: Markets across Asia-Pacific were mostly higher as investors digested a slew of new economic data. Japan’s Nikkei 225 led the way, gaining 1.3 per cent after a key survey showed that companies planned to increase their spending in the second half of the year.Sydney’s S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.2 per cent, although the mood was more cautious as investors awaited the Reserve Bank of Australia’s release later today of a policy update. The Shanghai Composite fell 0.1 per cent, while the Hong Kong market was closed to observe Establishment Day. Japanese stocks rallied after the Bank of Japan’s quarterly Tankan survey suggested that the economy could rebound after the April 1 increase in sales tax weighed on sentiment and spending habits. (Financial Times) Read more